‘Can You Turn Her Microphone Off Please?!’: This Ben Carson Interview Goes From Nuts to Nuclear
This was probably not the interview that former Republican candidate and current Trump pal Ben Carson had in mind.
The famed neurosurgeon appeared Friday morning on MSNBC’s Morning Joe and he got brutally raked over the coals by cohost Joe Scarborough and Katty Kay, who he immediately began fighting with from the opening minutes of his hit. The heat didn’t stop for several minutes, and Carson dug himself a deeper and deeper hole as it continued.
Some of the highlights — no, sorry, let’s call them lowlights — of his bizarre exchange include:
-defending Trump from the claims of abuse by a woman in an airplane’s first class, citing armrests and his own “common sense”
-fighting with Joe Scarborough about the rising deficit under President George W. Bush (and mischaracterizing how cutting taxes always adds to the deficit)
-throwing punches back and forth with Scarborough over his use of the phrase “you people” in the media (“Why can’t you just give a straight answer?” the Morning Joe host clapped back.)
-sparring with Katty Kay as she pressed him on labeling Trump’s accusers as liars
-…then following that up by asking Scarborough, “Can you turn her microphone off please?”
Yes, really, that last one really happened. More remarkably, he shockingly continued a beat later, “Do you guys have a plug, please?” presumably to fill the mouth hole of a journalist who — god forbid — asks difficult questions of a presidential candidate’s surrogate weeks before the election.
Asking to silence a female journalist while your campaign is desperate to increase its support among women? You don’t have to be a brain surgeon to know that’s a disaster. After the segment aired and the show came back from commercial, Kay, in no uncertain terms, called it a form of censorship.
Watch — and thoroughly enjoy, or shake your head in disbelief at — ten minutes of the insanity above from MSNBC.
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J.D. Durkin (@jiveDurkey) is an editorial producer and columnist at Mediaite.
